This blog describes Metatime in the Posthuman experience, drawn from Sir Isaac Newton's secret work on the future end of times, a tract in which he described Histories of Things to Come. His hidden papers on the occult were auctioned to two private buyers in 1936 at Sotheby's, but were not available for public research until the 1990s.

On 27 February 2015, Richard Branson encouraged entrepreneurs to come forward to share and expand new ideas. That's great, although some of the big biz riffing around the future celebrates the new idea of the new idea. One never actually gets to a new idea. The out-of-control lingo-about-lingo about the newness-of-newness reminds me of the explosion of Postmodern Expert Speak in the 1990s, which constructed new foundations of intellectual cultural authority.

The Valérian and Laureline "series focuses on the adventures of the dark-haired Valérian, a spatio-temporal agent, and his redheaded female companion, Laureline, as they travel the universe through space and time." Above, "Baroque spaceships (complete with ghost-ridden halls and gargoyles sticking out into the void of space)." Image Source: Dark Roasted Blend.

Mr. Branson quoted commenter Jason Silva, a photogenic Gen Y guru, who is a one-man meme generator and Singularity freestyle philosophical poet. He is compelling and makes good points, but there is something weird about the way he takes the Tech Revolution so literally and with such breathless utopian fervour. His clever rants reach height after height against IMAX effects. His videos are fantastic, if you like the Singularity Themepark Channel. His Youtube commentaries are part of the TestTube Network, which shares an unreflective undergraduate confidence that its contributors can fix the world, or at least understand it, if they edit it and add a soundtrack to it.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015), who played Mr. Spock on Star Trek, has died, aged 83. He played a half-alien, always relying on cold logic, but saved by his capacity for human empathy and emotion. Nimoy's final tweet, telling his followers to 'Live Long and Prosper' (Hat tip: The Verge):

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

Caption for the above photograph: "Buffeted by the solar wind, Comet Lovejoy's crooked ion tail stretches over 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, recorded on February 20. The starry background includes awesome bluish star Phi Persei below, and pretty planetary nebula M76 just above Lovejoy's long tail. Also known as the Little Dumbbell Nebula, after its brighter cousin M27 the Dumbbell Nebula, M76 is only a Full Moon's width away from the comet's greenish coma. Still shining in northern hemisphere skies, this Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is outbound from the inner solar system some 10 light-minutes or 190 million kilometers from Earth. But the Little Dumbbell actually lies over 3 thousand light-years away. Now sweeping steadily north toward the constellation Cassiopeia Comet Lovejoy is fading more slowly than predicted and is still a good target for small telescopes."

In the 1990s, coffeehouses became the stamping ground of professionals and hipsters. A great American adaptation from Central Europe and the Near East promised to invigorate North America beyond shopping malls and fast food chains. Within a decade, Starbucks became the kind of place where J. K. Rowling could write her first Harry Potter novel when she was broke.

At the global coffeehouse, the emphasis is no longer on cultural growth, despite what some undergraduates think. The coffeehouse sits on points on the grid along which the jolt-o-rama of Millennial life surges. We are always in an airport, always on the clock, always in a rush. You can travel around the world, and wherever you go, the same coffee haze and sticky chairs, misted with hazelnut syrup, will greet you. In the exhausting atmosphere of the coffee-information drip feed, it would be impossible even to digest your Grande, much less write a novel on your laptop while you're doing it. It is this fraught relationship with time, deadlines, with breathless seconds ticking by, which is driving people back to the tea house, where the rule of thumb is slowing down, not speeding up.

About Me

Welcome to my blog, dedicated to the aporia, anomie, mysteries, and nervous tensions of the turn of the Millennium. I'm a writer and academic, trained in the field of history. These are my histories of things that define the spirit of our times. This blog also goes beyond historians' visions of the past, and examines how metatime and time are perceived in other media and disciplines, between generations, and in high and pop culture.